Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 147 Sun Stone

The reason why Fan Meng was so excited was also very simple, because they had been digging for several days before, but all they dug out were piles of worthless rusted iron or almost rotten wood.

Although those things are indeed extremely precious from a historical perspective, in the eyes of a layman like Fan Meng, the excavation work in the past few days feels no different from digging a landfill.

Therefore, after seeing the golden box now, Fan Meng finally felt a little bit like hunting for treasure in the wild, so he urged Liang En to open the box quickly.

Unlike the well-sealed containers that Liang En found before, from the seawater constantly escaping from the cracks of this container, it can be seen at a glance that this container is not sealed at all.

This means that if something can withstand corrosion, opening the box will not make the contents quickly weather, and if it cannot withstand corrosion, the contents will have rotted away, and opening the box now will not make it worse.

"Let me see." Encouraged by Fan Meng, Liang En couldn't hold back his inner curiosity and opened the box. What surprised him was that the box contained only a transparent stone.

You must know that the ancient Vikings had similar views on various metals as they do today, and gold is naturally the most expensive metal in their hands.So it seems strange to have a stone in a box made of gold.

After all, under normal circumstances, the outer packaging of the item often matches the contents of the item, and it is very rare to pack a cheap item in an expensive box.

"Could it be that people pretended to be messed up in an emergency?" Fan Meng put forward his own point of view. "After all, the other party of this kind of gold box will definitely not be thrown around. It should be just an accident that it can appear here."

"You're right. Considering the location of the reef, I think this box was probably originally placed on the boat, but it fell out of the boat when the boat hit the rocks." Liang En nodded, approving Fan fierce statement.

Compared with the ancient Germans and ancient Gauls who were accustomed to throwing various sacrifices in the water, the Vikings were more inclined to throw objects into the flames or kill animals or even people when they sacrificed, so this It is unlikely that things will be used as sacrifices.

Unlike the sailing ships of the age of great voyages, the decks of the famous Viking longships are open to the air, so in the event of an unfortunate accident, the things on the ship can easily be scattered around the ship due to collisions.

"But you said that this thing was put in by accident, I don't think so." Liang En said as he lifted up the stone in the box, and then looked at the sun.

The light transmission of this stone is very good, even close to some cheap optical glass.That is to say, even if it is just a piece of calcite, it will be very precious in ancient times because of its transparency.

"Even in an emergency, those experienced navigators are unlikely to pack something wrong because of panic. Especially since this place is so close to the coastline, even rookies will not panic." Liang En pointed to the reef under his feet.

"Then what is so precious about this stone? It deserves to be put in a gold box." Fan Meng looked at the stone in Liang En's hand full of doubts, because although stones with such transparency were rare in ancient times, they were not. valuable. "

Let me think about it—" Fan Meng's question is indeed on the key point, especially that many important historical discoveries are found out from a seemingly unreasonable place.

"I wonder, could this thing be the legendary Sun Stone?" After thinking for a few minutes, Liang En suddenly had an idea and thought that something he had seen on the Internet before was a guess.

The reason why it is called conjecture is because this thing has always been a legend, and there is no corresponding archaeological data to prove whether this legend circulated in the epic is true.

The only archaeological reference to the Sunstone comes from an ancient British shipwreck found in the English Channel a few years ago, when a piece of calcite was found in a crevice in the hull.

But the problem is that the ship is a ship from the Age of Discovery, and at the same time, the stone was just stuck in the gap between the ship's planks before.Therefore, the archaeological community is still unable to determine this fact.

And now, the mystery should be solved.After all, what the Vikings could put in a gold box is definitely very important to them. If you add that this stone is calcite, you should be able to confirm your previous guess.

More importantly, when Liang En made this judgment, three new cards appeared in his mind.This also shows that his guess is true.

"Sunstone, sounds like a very exciting thing, let me check it out." Fan Meng immediately took out his mobile phone and started to check it, but quickly put it down again.

"Damn it, there is no cell phone signal in this place." Fan Meng put away his cell phone helplessly.Then he looked at Liang En and asked. "Can you tell me what this Sun Stone is?"

"This is a tool used by the ancient Vikings for navigation." Liang En held the calcite on his chest and explained. "The ancient Vikings wanted to navigate the vast sea through various means, such as using marine animals, ocean currents or wind directions."

"Among so many methods, one of the most important navigation methods is to use the sun to navigate, because most of the other navigation methods can only navigate in the near sea, and the far sea is useless."

"However, since their voyages are mainly in the North Atlantic Ocean, they often encounter very long rainy days. In order to overcome this difficulty, the other party finally found this kind of calcite that can see the sun on cloudy days, and named it Sunstone. .”

"What's the reason for being able to see the sun on a cloudy day?" After hearing Liang En's words, Fan Meng showed a puzzled expression. "I know a thermal imager can do that, but with a rock like this—"

"Don't underestimate this rock." Liang En said after searching the memory in his mind. "According to the verification of scientists, calcite can really do this."

"According to scientists, the reason why humans can see the sun through calcite is entirely due to the principle of polarized light. When light waves propagate, they can be decomposed into electromagnetic waves vibrating in various directions. If light waves only vibrate in one direction, It's called polarized light."

"Calcite is a special crystal with an internal molecular structure that allows it to filter out all light except sunlight, thereby forming polarized light."

"Of course, not all calcite can do this. I suspect that there are only a few stones that can do this, so that no one has been found in archaeology."

Because it happened to be cloudy now, Liang En tried to hold the stone in front of his eyes and look at the sky.Sure enough, after more than half an hour of trying, he successfully saw the sunlight in the clouds through the calcite at a special angle.

"That's right, we once again proved a legend." Liang En said while instructing Fan Meng to use the calcite. "As legend has it, the Vikings were actually able to navigate the sea through a stone."

(End of this chapter)